About a year and a half ago, I had checked into getting the tubal ligation procedure done because I didn’t want anymore children and I was looking for a permanant fix instead of staying on the birth control shot for many years.
I was advised that it would be dangerous to persue the tubal ligation because I have a couple big, old scars from surgeries when I was a child and there is old scar tissue on my bowel wall. If something happened and it was cut into, it could cause internal bleeding. So I decided not to go through with it and continued to use the depovera shot. As I was going back to the facility to get my birth control shots, one of the doctors there told me about essure and how the procedure is done. It seemed like it was a great idea because I wasn’t able to do any other form of permanent sterilization.
I had the essure placed Aug. 27th, 2014. I was told before and after the procedure that it would be minimal pain and cramps and would not be expected to bleed after the implant very long. After the procedure was done, it was around 3 days later, and I was still in severe cramping pain and still bleeding. I called the doctor’s office and asked if this was normal because I was told that I shouldn’t have any of these problems by now. My doctor advised me just to continue taking 800 mg ibuprofen every 6 hrs. for the pain. I called the next week, still the same problems. I was told the same thing. I continued to bleed & have severe cramps up until a month after the procedure and I no longer called the office because I was not taken seriously.
After that, every so often, I would still have severe cramping and the only way I could treat it was just to take over the counter meds with a heating pad on my stomach to help a little bit.
When my 3 month HSG check up test came, I was told again, there will be some pain with inserting the iv dye, but afterwards I should be fine. No cramping, no bleeding. During the test, I was in SEVERE pain! It felt like I was having labor pains. The results found that the left side stayed in tact, but the right side migrated quite a ways away from the right fallopian tube and you could not tell where it was located at for sure. The doctor told me that he wasn’t really worried about it and he didn’t want to go digging around in there to figure out where its at. After the HSG test was over, again, I had severe cramping and bleeding for days. I called the doctor the day after my HSG test and asked for a CT scan because I wanted to know where it was located, I didn’t want it to be lodged into something important. The doctor refused my test, said it didn’t matter where it was at because those things are meant to be in our bodies.
I decided to seek help elsewhere. Went to different Women’s health doctor in another town that was familiar with putting in the essure and asked if she would do a CT scan. She agreed to do the CT scan and found that it was in the lower part of my uterus on my bladder wall. Since I do have old scar tissue on my bowel wall, she is taking the extra step to have another general surgeon familiar with that to assist her in doing the tubal ligation so she can cauterize both tubes off to make it permanent and to remove the migrated device from my uterus.
I would of never done this procedure, if I was aware of the many complications and pain that could come with the essure device.
I hope all of our stories help others in there essure complications and in deciding against the essure procedure. I hope someday soon, they will take this off the market. Its very sad to see everyone that has had so many problems with this device.
Good luck to all!